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If there is one thing I have learned during my time here at the Sanger Papers, it is that Sanger was not afraid to go to extreme lengths for her cause. This level of dedication and devotion to the birth control movement inevitably landed her in jail multiple times, as birth control was not effectively legalized until 1965.

I recently came across an interview of Sanger during one of her first stints in jail, after the raid of her Brownsville Clinic in 1916, and found it to be incredibly inspiring. The reporter started off the article by noting how “remarkably fresh” she appeared, despite having spent the night in horrible prison conditions. Sanger truly could withstand anything.

Mothers with carriages stand outside the Brownsville Clinic, Brooklyn

Sanger started off the interview by describing the horrible conditions of her prison cell.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, “but before we begin to discuss my arrest I wish to tell you something. Please- for my sake and for the sakes of the other women detained here- let me describe the horrible conditions of this jail. I do not see how the people of Kings County can tolerate such conditions. The blanket which covers my iron cot is dirty. Creatures of all manners and kinds invaded my cell. They came in vast numbers. There is no soap with which to wash my hands. I am only mentioning a few of the defects. Put me on record, please, as saying the women of Kings County should invade this place and clean it out.”

Then, she discussed her actual imprisonment and expressed her conviction to keep fighting.

Sanger dramatized her Brownsville Clinic arrest in a film she produced in 1917. Named “Birth Control,” it was banned by New York City’s Commissioner of Licenses, George Bell. Unfortunately, no copies of the film have been found.

“Now I can talk of my arrest. How do I regard it? As an invasion of my personal rights. It is an outrage and the day will come when this community will realize that Margaret Sanger long ago tried to show it the light. I shall continue in my work. After my trial and the final disposition of my case I am going back to my clinic.”

“They cannot stop me by placing me under arrest. Some time or other I will have regained my liberty. Then Margaret Sanger is going back to violate that law all over again. The charge in the newspapers that I was exhibiting and offering for sale a box of pills is a vicious lie.”

Sanger also referred to the way in which she was caught—by selling birth control devices (probably a diaphragm) to a female detective.

“I admit we did sell to the woman detective. We knew who she was. Mrs. Byrne, my sister, is a hot-headed Irish girl and she deliberately urged the detective to buy. We framed the two dollar bill and wrote across the bill. ‘Received from a spy.’ It was laughable to see the woman’s face when she returned and saw how she had been tricked.”

“That woman detective is beyond me. Perhaps she did only her duty, but personally I would rather scrub floors for my bread than earn it by fighting my sisters.”

In February of 1937, Margaret Sanger was invited to speak at the Hotel Hilton in El Paso,Texas to celebrate the opening of the El Paso Mother’s Health Center (which would later become the El Paso Planned Parenthood). However, due to pressure from local Catholic groups, the event was moved to the Hotel Paso del Norte. The event was hosted by Health Center Chairman, Beth Mary Goetting and the Birth Control Clinic Committee.

Sanger spoke in front of some 350 El Pasoans including a number of local clergy and doctors. She expressed the hope that clinics would be established both on El Paso’s north and south sides. Clinic equipment and supplies were provided by the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau.

El Paso people are the first to take advantage of the December 7, United States Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that physicians might send contraceptives by mail – an act considered hitherto illegal…Now doctors need not fear a $500 fine, or five years in the penitentiary for administering a simple, scientific preventive to a woman who is not able to bear a child.

On February 9, 1938, Sanger wrote to Ms. Goetting commending the center:

I am particularly proud of the fine work being done in El Paso and I feel that your group has much to offer to others interested in advancing the birth control cause in Texas.

From 1937 – 1938, the clinic served over 600 patients. By the time of it’s closure in 2010, the clinic was serving more than 10,000 local women providing prenatal and postnatal information and healthcare including affordable HIV/AIDS testing.

The Hotel Paso del Norte is a historic hotel located less than one mile north from the United States-Mexico border. The hotel, designed by Trost & Trost, was opened in 1912. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the hotel was extensively remodeled in 2004 and renamed the Camino Real El Paso Hotel.

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Texas women set up birth control clinics loosely modeled on Sanger's Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in New York (shown above)

We would like to kick off our celebration of Women’s History Month with a blog about new research on the Texas birth control movement from the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. The article, “‘All Good Things Start with Women,’: the Origin of the Texas Birth Control Movement, 1933-1945,” was written by Harold L. Smith, a professor of History at the University of Houston-Victoria.

Dr. Smith covers the development of a birth control movement in Texas, demonstrating that its success came chiefly from its ability to attract the support of the women of the Texas social elite, male physicians and businessmen, and local clergymen. Like many other local birth control groups, those in Texas attracted support by distancing itself from women’s sexual freedom, pitching birth control as an alternative to abortion, and by using the economic crisis of the Depression to make the case for increased access to birth control.

The article highlights the efforts of Katie Rice Ripley, who helped Sanger lobby Texas congressmen to legalize the dissemination of birth control through the mails and Agnese Carter Nelms who worked to build a state birth control league that established a string of clinics in Dallas, Houston, El Paso, Austin, Fort Worth, Austin, Waco, and San Antonio in the 1930s. Documents from the Margaret Sanger Papers were used to reveal the involvement of Sanger and the national birth control movement in Texas organizing. Tracing the movement through power struggles for state leadership between Nelms and Ripley, challenges to the birth control movement by Catholic officials in El Paso, and a struggle to convince state authorities to make birth control part of its public health coverage.

As Dr. Smith concludes:

“Historians used to portray women as passive victims of the Great Depression, but more recent studies have emphasized their resilience in expanding women’s public roles despite the hostile climate of opinion. This essay . . . presents evidence that during the 1930s Texas women were agents of change who used public anxiety about the Great Depression’s social and economic effects to develop a new women’s movement that increased married, lower income women’s access to birth control through the creation of a network of clinics. Women initiated the effort to create a clinic in each of the communities in which one was established and volunteered their services as officers, board members, and in other capacities despite public attacks designed to smear their reputation.”

The article can be found in The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, CXIV: 9 (Jan. 2011): pp. 253-85.

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